
...E WORK OF NEW ENGLAND IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY. 



SERMON 



DELIVEKED BEFORE THE 



feattte aiib f^platiije Jepartmeats 



GOVERNMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS, 



AisnsruAL E L E c T I o isr 



WEDNESDAY, Jan. 4, 1865. 



By a. L. stone, D. D 



B O STON: 

WM. V. SPENCER, No. 134 WASHINGTON ST, 
1865. 



THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY. 



SEKMO:^ 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



^Htutik anb Jtgislatiije Jeparlm^nts 



GOVERNMENT OP MASSACHUSETTS, 



AlSrisrUAL ELECTION, 



WEDNESDAY, Jan. 4, 1865. 



B Y A'^ Lr STONE, D. D. 



BOSTON: 

WM. V. SPENCER, No. 134 WASHINGTON ST. 

1865. 



Cflntmontoaltfe of ilassatlttsHts. 



Senatk Chamber, Boston, January 9, 1865. 
Eev, A. L. Stone : 

Dear Sir, — Pursuant to an Order, unanimously adopted, the under- 
signed were appointed a Committee to present to you the thanks of the 
Senate for your able and instructive Discourse, delivered before the 
Government of the Commonwealth on the 4th inst., and to request a copy 
of the same for the press. 

Trusting that it will be both agreeable and convenient for you to comply 
with the request at an early day, 

"We remain, 

Very truly yours, 

HENRY BARSTOW, 
A. M. IDE, 
JOSEPH A. POND, 

Committee. 



Boston, January 16, 1865. 

Gentlemen, — I herewith submit to your disposal the Discourse for 
which you ask in the name of the Senate, with my grateful acknowledg- 
ments for the courtesy of that body, and for your own in communicating 
their wishes. * 

Very respectfully yours, 

A. L. STONE. 

Hon. Messrs. Henry Barstow, A. M. Ide, Joseph A. Pond, 

Committee of Senate of Massachusetts. 



Commonto^aI!| of Itassac^usdls. 



In Senate, January 16, 1865. 

The Committee, to whom was committed the Order in relation to the 
Election Sermon, preached before the State Government on the 4th inst., 
have attended to that duty, and have received a communication from Rev. 
A. L. Stone, D. D., expressing his acknowledgments for the courtesy of 
the Senate, accompanied by a copy of the Sermon, and report the accom- 
panying Order. 

Per order, 

HENRY BARSTOW. 



Concurred. 



Senate, January 17,' 1865. 
S. N. GIFFORD, CTer/t. 



In Senate, January 16, 1865.' 

Ordered, That eight thousand copies of the Election Sermon preached 
before the Government of the Commonwealth, on the 4th inst., be printed 
for the use of the Legislature. 



i 



SERMON. 



Isaiah, Iviii. 12. 

AND THEY THAT SHALL BE OF THEE SHALL BUILD THE OLD WASTE PLACES: 
THOU SHALT KAISE UP THE FOUNDATIONS OP MANY GENERATIONS; AND THOU 
SHALT BE CALLED THE KEPAIREK OF THE BREACH, THE RESTORER OF PATHS 
TO DWELL IN. 

We cannot to-day, be narrow, and shut our 
thoughts within the Hmits of the Commonwealth. 
The times are educating us all into views and 
sympathies broad as the land. We stand in these 
hours on an eminence, and our horizon is the 
borders of the Republic. We are lifted to the 
dome of our nationality, and our field of vision 
stretches to the water-line that marks either ocean 
shore — the blue of the lakes and the blue of the 
gulf. 

We cannot name our State, or any State, without 
thinking at once of our whole country. We are 
weaned from the idea that a State is complete by 
itself. It is one comj^onent part of a Federal 
Government, held to its sisters by a deathless bond. 
It is a branch of a living and fruitful vmc, in which 



8 THE WORK OP NEW ENGLAND 

alone it has life and fruitfulness. Except it abide 
in the vine, we may reverently apply the scripture, 
it " is cast forth as a branch, and is withered ; and 
men gather them and cast them into the fire, and 
they are burned." 

Let the stars in the heavens break from their 
constellations, but let not one on our field of blue, 
part the chain of celestial gravitation and attempt 
to shine alone. It 'shall soon become a "wander- 
ing star," " going out m the blackness of darkness 
forever." 

We belong to a nation — a nation living still — 
lair, and strong, and whole — undivided and indi^ds- 
ible — wearing still on its brow, for all the jealous 
kingdoms to read, the old familiar inscription, 
"jE' i^^uribus unum^'' — and girding itself anew for 
the race of the f\iture. 

And the question which I desu-e briefly to discuss 
to-day, is this : Wliat is the work of Massachusetts 
and of JSFew J^ngland in this near future of the 
whole country f 

"We may say, in the first jplace, that the life of 
IN^ew England cannot be dissevered from the 
national life. There has been in some quarters 
certain idle and flippant talk in reference to such 
a readjustment of the national boundaries as should 



IN THE FUTUEB OF OUE COUNTRY. 9 

leave this old Puritan Commonwealth and her five 
sisters outside the walls of the new confederation. 
But our connection with the Republic is not a 
matter of territorial contiguity and geographical 
lines. Let men run border lines as they please; 
let them frame ordinances of separation ; let them 
build a Tartar wall between us and the great 
homestead; neither civil nor material barriers can 
exile us from the family circle. It were just as 
possible to separate from the loaf the leaven that 
made it light and sweet, or from a human life the 
principles and influences of its early nurture. 

New England is not a certain limited portion of 
the national domain-'— a sharp eastern angle that 
can be dipt off. 'No map of the Union gives to the 
eye her full and proper extent.* No engineering 
art can explore and project her share of our 
continental heritage. 

Her life is ubiquitous in the nation. From her 
fountain heart the warm arterial currents have 
circulated through the whole body and flowed out 
to the remotest extremities. Her sons have gone 
forth into every habitable place of the broad land. 
They have carried with them her enterprise, her 
intelligence, her art, her ingenuity, the pure and 
ordered life of her homes, the tranquil securities 



10 THE WORK OP NEW ENGLAND 

of her law-abiding communities, her system of com- 
mon schools, academies and coEeges, her reverence 
for the Sabbath, the memory and the love of her 
household altars and public sanctuaries. Their 
fii'st harvests as they have occupied and opened 
up virgin soil have been not what the earth yielded 
to the hand of tillage; they sowed first of all, 
Puritan ideas — the seeds of !N^ew England mstitu- 
tions; and that which grew earliest beneath their 
husbandry has been the transplanted life of their 
own native hills and valleys. Here are indestruc- 
tible channels which cannot be closed, and through 
which the fountained abundance of 'New England's 
fulness has flowed out and is flowing still across 
the prairies, and along the central valley and 
through the Avilderness and unto the far Pacific 
coast, l^ew England can no more be divorced 
from the Union than the maternity of a mother 
from her children. That maternity is in their 
form and features; it gives the coloring to cheek 
and hair ; it looks from their eyes, it speaks from 
their tongues, it runs in their vems, it beats in their 
hearts. IS'ot even by miracle could it be separated 
from them. 

, Separate 'New England from the Union? Give 
us back our sons and daughters, more than half a 



IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY. H 

million of them, from all the homes of the land 
outside om* borders ! Give lis back our millions of 
capital that have already changed so much of the 
western wilderness to a smiling garden; whitened 
the length of its rivers with the foam of swift 
steamers, and braided over the land the iron strands 
of trade and travel; turn back upon us the deep 
streams of wealth that flow out annually to those 
granaries of the West for their cereal stores! 
• Give us back the forceful and fruitful words that 
have gone forth from her press, her pulpit, her 
rostrum of public oratory, from every platform and 
every page on which the eloquent lips of her sons 
have spoken; words that have quickened and 
controlled the intellectual life of generations, and 
guided popular movements in every part of the 
country; this public speech of New England that 
has gone forth free, and fresh, and vital, as the air 
of heaven, gather it up and restore it to its authors ; 
separate it from the popular mind and heart, from 
the principles and the practice of our homebred 
millions! Give us back the messengers of a pure 
Gospel that have gone forth at our sending with 
large self-sacrifice, to plant the banner of* the cross 
in "western wilds," and bear it on in the very van 
of our spreading civilization, and with them the 



12 THE WORK OP NEW ENGLAND 

churches they have built, and the fau' Ghristian order 
they have reared amid the outlawiy of frontier 
settlements ! Give us back the broad bright river 
of our charities, that has branched to so many 
thresholds of suffering through these four tragic 
years! Give us back the brave blood that has 
drenched a hundred battle-fields, and reddened the 
trail of ^ew England feet wherever the armies of 
the Union have marched! 

"When all this can be done — when the nation will 
consent to this — then may men talk about "leavuig 
New England out in the cold." Till then, her 
place is in the warm hearts of the people — her life 
mingled with the life of the nation — " one and 
inseparable." 

We have, we may say, in the second place, to 
Tceep JVew England undegenerate. 

The greatness of [N'ew England's influence is not 
so much in what she does, as in what she is. Tlie 
two go together. "When she 'works, when she 
speaks, it is the back-ground of character that 
lends to both their weight. Just as when an indi- 
vidual utters his thoughts — it is not«so much what 
he says as who says it. The chief emphasis of 
words and of deeds comes from the heart of the 
doer and the speaker. There is no premimn in the 



IN THE FUTUKE OF OUR COUNTRY. 13 

sphere of moral power, upon idleness, frivolity, and 
corruption. Both for men and for communities, if 
we would have the influence pure and strong, 
these attributes must first be demonstrated in the 
character. It is when those who speak in the 
name of ISTew England can say — "Look at her," 
that their oratory is beyond tongues of flame and 
words of fire. We have it in charge then to guard 
the purity and nourish the strength of this home- 
life. The fountam must be full and clear if the 
streams are to be pure and copious. We must 
keep the New England ideal rounded and perfect 
in her actual. 

There are some things 'New England cannot be. 
She cannot be the granary of the nation — a great 
agricultural producer. A single prairie lot where 
the horses trot at the plough in one straight furrow 
of miles before they turn, and where, later, the 
reapers seem struggling like wi'ecked mariners in 
the wide, tawny harvest sea, 

" Ran nantes in gurgite vasto," 

would swallow as a little morsel all the farming 
life within our borders. She cannot be a grower 
of tropical fruits and flowers — ^breathmg from red, 
ripe lips the fragrance of tropical airs, a tiller of 



14 THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND 

the vine, the orange, and the ohve, — a nurse of 
pale mvahds hurrying from cold coast winds to 
seek soft bowers and sunny vales. She cannot 
show in her granite cliffs and rude ravines the 
yellow, glittermg scales to which the greed of all 
nations should come rushing and- trampling — 
hewuig down her hills and turning her peaceful 
wilds back into the bald desolations of old chads. 
But she can be the fountain-head of mtelligence 
for the people, kindling in every little vale and 
hamlet, for the poorest and humblest, the lights of 
letters and learning — building on favored heights 
her tall towers of Science, to scatter their rays afar, 
— calling to her classic halls the wisest teachers of 
the day — shedding upon all the paths of her chil- 
di'en, from the untu'uig enginery of her press, the 
white leaves" of daily knowledge and high research, 
as orchard trees shed the blossoms of spring — as 
this January sky sheds its snowflakes to-day. She 
can be the schoolmistress of the land, teaching the 
alphabet of all good nurture, — leading her puj^ils 
up through the great volumes of wisdom, and 
quarrying out the massive granite of her thoughts 
for all intellectual builders. 

She can be the mother of art and of invention, so 
that the right hand of all labor, whether of the 



IN THE FUTURE OP OUR COUNTRY. 15 

mind, the shop, or the field, shall stretch itself out 
to her for the most facile implements of its craft. 

She can be the asserter and defender of all 
hmnane and noble principles, so that every cham- 
pion of tnith and freedom, every lover of the right 
and of his fellow-man, shall draw inspiration from 
her words and strength from her steadfastness. 

She can especially be the mother and nurse of 
men. This is her royal staple. The sands of the 
Cape are barren and rough, and bleak are the 
Berkshire hills ; but the barren sands and the bleak 
hills grow men. To train the generations of her 
sons and daughters is the most peculiar work of 
'New England within her borders. She does not 
put her infants out to nurse. Her generous breasts 
suckle all her babes. She is to take each new-born 
child of every home, and to solve over it this 
problem : Given a fresh young life, how to conduct 
it to the noblest manhood, the purest womanliood! 
From the cradle to the fullest prime — and onward 
to the chamber of rest — she is to be to this life 
in all its physical, mental, and moral culture, the 
institutions that, from first to last, shall develop, 
mould, and guard it — ^the atmosphere that shall fill 
its lungs, and drape it round about, a wise and 
faithful foster-parent. Beyond all the newer and 



16 THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND 

more unfurnished portions of our country, she is to 
provide within her rocky portals a nursery for the 
childi'cn of the RepubHc. 

There is one word which, more than any other, 
holds before our thought the whole 'New England 
ideal. It is not only a descriptive, but an inspiring 
word. It leads- us back to the presence and the 
heroisms of our dead fathers. There throb in it 
the stern, strong pulses of martyr life. It is keyed 
to the music of our early forest temples, in Avhich 
the Pilgrims worshipped God, 

"And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang 
To the anthems of the free." 

Oh! that our New England might be, late and 
forever, what she was at first — Puritan! Once 
a word of reproach, veined with sneering irony, 
History has written it as our proudest eulogy. 
To keep it unblotted down the ages is our most 
sacred trust. 

For this there must be a real, practical, public 
faith in God. We must believe that he is a God 
nigh at hand, and not afar off. We must not exile 
him to the seventh heavens — a cold, remote, hazy 
spectre. There must be with us a reverent sense 
of his constant presence, and a dev^out recognition 



IN THE FUTUEE OF OUR COUNTRY. 17 

of the mingling of his counsel and his hand in all 
our private and public affairs. How near he was 
to our fathers; they walked mth him, and talked 
with him, and questioned his will at every step of 
life ! Their eye sought his, their hand touched his 
in every strait. We must not be afraid to name 
him, and avouch him, and appeal to him, in our 
proclamations, and State j)apers, and legislative 
acts, and judicial decisions. We ought to be afraid 
to leave him out, and to withdraw our public life 
from the shadow of those tutelar sanctities. If ever 
we cease to be here a God-fearing people ; if we 
drift away from the faith of a divine, revealed 
religion, and its rightful control of human affairs; 
if we give up the Christian Sabbath as an effete 
mstitution ; if we discard the Bible as God's code 
of laws for individuals and for States ; if we disso- 
ciate politics and religion, breaking up the old 
Puritan bridal, which wedded them, and pronounced 
over them this nuptial benediction, "What God 
hath joined together, let not man put asunder; " 
if we make our public days of thanksgi\ing and of 
hmniliation, mere festive holidays, in which we 
seek our own pleasure rather than to please and 
propitiate God; if we divorce thus the voice of the 
State, the course of law, the decrees of justice, and 



18 THE WORK OP NEW ENGLAND 

the popular life, from the word and authority of 
God, we shall have emptied our old baptismal name 
of all its significance, — keeping the form but not 
the life, the shadow not the substance,— and in that 
hour and in that act the sceptre of l!^ew England's 
power will be broken, her crowai lost, and her 
banner that she planted in the wilderness, with 
its ancient heraldry, " Christo et ecclesice,''^ trail 
dishonored in the dust. 

Let all of us rather conspire to lift up again the 
old Puritanic ideal. "It is certain," declares one 
of the early ^N^ew England voices, "that civil 
dominion was but tlie second motive, religion the 
primary one, with our ancestors m coming hither. 
... It was not so much their design to establish 
religion for the benefit of the State, as civil govern- 
ment for the benefit of religion." Another voice, 
a century earlier, testified that the fathers " came 
not hither for the world, or for land, or for traffic ; 
but for religion, and for liberty of conscience in the 
worship of God, Avhich was their only design." 

This sacred interest was first everywhere. " As 
near the law of God as they can be," was the 
instruction of the General Court of Massachusetts, 
in old time, to its committee appointed to frame 
laws for the Commonwealth. 



IN THE FUTUEE OF OUR COUNTRY. 19 

Only in the reproduction and general diflPasion 
of this spirit can we hope to make the ISTew 
England of the past, the 'New England of the 
future, a power and a glory in the land. 

Looking forward now and beyond our own 
confines, we may say, in the third place, that it 
belongs to us to live in and for the future of the 
whole country. 

This, too, is one part of our inheritance from a 
Puritan ancestry. Orn* fathers were builders for 
the future. They lived for all the coming ages. 
They laid deep foundations whereon they hoped 
there might rise, after their day, the walls of a 
Christian empu-e, to stand until earth's " cloud 
capt towers " shoidd fall. We are fond of sajang, 
"they builded more grandly than they knew." 
Perhaps that is true in respect to the political 
fabric of which they laid the corner-stone, and 
the material results that have followed their work. 
But they had a \dsion of a spiritual temple that 
should rise from their humble beginnings, until 
its dome should span the continent and its arches 
echo the psalms of meeting and mingling nations. 
Foundation-work is congenial to the sons of 'New 
England. It runs in our blood to be pioneers of 
a spreading Christian civilization. 



20 THE WORK OP NEW ENGLAND 

"We must look forward, for our past is brief. 
It is kindling and inspii'ing, but it is yet fresh 
and new. We have no calendar of hoary cen- 
turies, stocked Avith events and revolutions that 
have marked off the eras of history, and rich with 
the spoils of time. Compared with the life of nations 
and the courses of history, we began but yester- 
day. Looking back a glance reaches the start- 
ing point. More naturally we turn our gaze 
forward. ISTot records, but prophecies, hold our 
eyes. Untempted to live on the glories of a dead 
ancestry, we are inspired to do something for 
our posterity to commemorate. 

We must look forward, for our ideal is higher 
than we have reached. We may have been vain 
and boastful, but none of us can believe that the 
summit of American greatness has been reached. 
The magnificent capabilities of the contment and 
the adaptation of our forms of life to all possible 
progress on such a theatre, rebuke our com- 
placency in the past and hold in prospect a 
sublime goal for which we have yet to gu*d up 
our loins and run. 

We must look forward, because revolution 
leaves us not a finished task, but only a clear 
track. Give us peace and victory to-morrow. 



IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY. 21 

and it brings ns only a vacation from fighting, 
none from work. Kevolution does not create a 
civilization. It opens the door and ushers it in, if 
it be prepared. If this revolution of ours succeed 
fully, it will have helped to rid us 6f some malign 
forces in the development of American life — at 
least, of some incarnations of those forces — it will 
deliver into our hands a nation saved from crum- 
bling apart; but what this nation shall be and do, 
what it shall live for and realize, is a problem 
that would yet remain. 

!N^ations must work as God works on the earth, 
for something yet beyond and mnnatured. When 
they pause and say, this is the limit and con- 
summation of our doing, he will say of each of 
them, " Cut it down, why cumbereth it the 
ground?" At every stage of progress they must 
renew their devotion to what is incomplete in the 
divme scheme for man. Casting off all dead and 
useless appendages, burning their sliips behind 
them as they touch new shores of discovery and 
conquest, they must follow hard after the guiding 
steps that are tracking man's way to the calm 
heights of a perfect social state. 

We may ask, then, in the fourth place, what 
are the specific tasks to which we are to address 



22 THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND 

ourselves in working for the future of the whole 
country? 

The nearest duty of all is to push this war 
triumphantly through. Persistent rebellion is 
alone responsible for all the blood and treasure 
it shall yet cost to maintain the supremacy of 
the govermnent. That supremacy can only be 
maintained by showing its power to be, as well 
as its right to be, when both are called in ques- 
tion. Let no sign of weariness or unpatience 
in the protracted struggle come from us, while a 
rebel banner taints the air. The length of the 
war has been absolutely indispensable for the full 
sense of nationality — the unity and authority of 
the Federal Govermnent, to enter and possess the 
hearts of the people — for the radical revolutioniz- 
ing of the old social system of the South — for 
the education of the masses up to the political 
and moral issues of the present hour. Let no 
voice among us call for peace while treason stands 
erect and defiant. Let no sigh of complaint 
freight any Avind that blows from the ]^orth 
toward the Capitol. To every fresh call for men 
let us give quick, consenting response. The 
armies that have been marching through the 
siunmer and autumn from victory to victory, 



IN THE FUTURE OP OUR COUNTRY. 23 

must needs find theii* ranks thinner; and the 
final strokes are yet to be deUvered. We have 
to fill the ranks, to stimulate enlisting, to sound 
the call for volunteers at all the gateways of our 
hills and in the streets of our towns, to compen- 
sate the forsaken tasks of labor's thrifty hands, to 
keep a light on the hearth of the absent soldier's 
home for his wife and babes, and bread on the 
board, and " the wolf from the door." " Fight it 
through ! " Let the press emblazon it, morning 
and evening. Let the ministry of Him who 
came to send the sword on earth before his 
reign of peace, give it voice. Let legislation in 
town and State give it all helpful, practical 
endorsement. Let the whole heart of l^ew Eng- 
land give it clear and ringing echo. And here, 
especially, where the word was first spoken that 
broke the silent terror of the beginning, let that 
sound have once more full volume and cheerful 
tone : " The sons of Massachusetts, to the rescue ! " 
"We have, of course, a duty of ceaseless vigi- 
lance. The transition periods of a nation's life 
are perilous crises. They inaugurate the dynasties 
of moral forces that are to sway the sceptre for 
a cycle Avhose diameter no man can calculate. The 
fortmies of this nation are in transition now. 



24 THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND 

We have reached the Ime, saiUiig on iii the Ship 
of State, and are crossing it into seas nnploughed 
before. In respect to opinions, morals, pubhc 
leaders, society and institutions, we are leaving 
the old and entering upon the new. On the 
other side of this great chasm that separates om* 
past from our future, our national story is to 
begin afresh — our annals to open a new volume. 
Public sentiment is to be reformed. 'New banners 
are to float in the van of national progress. We 
are to take down and rebuild many a shattered 
line of our walls of empire. We are to legislate 
and to act upon novel questions, without precedents. 
What shall we carry on with us? Wliat shall 
we leave behind? What new elements shall come 
in to leaven the whole lump — what old elements 
shall be extirpated or neutralized? What thmgs 
vital and precious, the legacy of the past, shall be 
studiously garnered up ? AYliat dead weights shall 
be thrown off? Who will watch to see that no 
divine gift of the old civilization is dropped out — 
no seed principle of our earlier liberties and 
evangelisms blown away or smothered — no ancient 
guaranties of public faith and honor and popu- 
lar j)rivilege weakened or forgotten? Wlio will 
scrutinize as carefully the forces that harness 



IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY. 25 

themselves to the onward movement, and make 
sure that no Avanton, profane hand lay hold of the 
sacred ark of our hopes — that no seed prmciple 
of mischief be sown where many hands are 
scattering gram broadcast — that no insidious 
attempt to twine around our swelling limbs fetters 
that shall one day cripple our growth and our free 
motion, shall prosper? 

Tliis is precisely the demand that invokes ^ew 
England intervention. Her weight in the waver- 
ing scales of our public destinies is not the weight 
of numbers, nor of territorial greatness and 
promise — nor of political predominance. The 
centre of political power has forever receded from 
the East. It will visit no more the Atlantic slope 
of the Alleghanies. It is crossing meridian after 
meridian, westward still. Let it pass. Our moral 
sceptre remains. It is oj^en to us still to sway the 
nation by the force of ideas — to rule through the 
royalty of principles that can never be discrowned. 
Let the questions which we have just asked get 
their clear and authoritative answers in the voice 
and the attitude of this little sisterhood of com- 
monwealths, and we rule the confederacy still. 
But we must look well at the foundation of the 
principles wliich we attempt to assert and mam- 



26 THE WORK OP NEW ENGLAND 

tain. They must have an unquestionable right of 
sujDremacy. They must be royal "jwi-e divinoJ^ 
They must he no temjDorary policies and expedi- 
encies, but everlasting facts and laws. They 
must take hold of what is imperishable — have 
their roots in the very nature of God, and be 
linked to the car of His omnij)otent providence. 
The divineness of government, the supremacy of 
law, order imperial, human equality, the inalienable 
rights of man, intelligence, freedom, law and 
religion, the four immovable pillars of communal 
peace and j^erpetuity; standing by these, holding 
and teaching this faith, 'New England will be a 
power in the Union forever. 

For these principles, then, she must be jealous 
with an infinite jealousy in Avatching the country 
through this present crisis. This is the turn of 
the fever. There must be no negligence nor 
slumbering now. Every change must be noted. 
Every pulse must be felt. The slightest aberration 
is of moment. We must be Argus-eyed, so that 
no future disaster shall impeach our vigilance in 
this critical hour. 

Another 'duty of ours concerns the deliverance 
of this land from the bondage of the past. That 
deliverance is not yet complete. For one, I am 



IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY. 27 

restless and anxious until that consummation 
come. 

We have been in covenant with a great wrong. 
We admitted it into partnership with our national 
life. We awarded it rights and immunities. It 
proved itself a fraudulent partner from the begin- 
ning, but we were held by the bond. We kept it. 
There was an inherent incompatibility, but the 
covenant remained. Through all this time our 
proper national civilization was not born, but only 
conceived. Jacob and Esau struggled together 
in this pregenital strife — never dissociated — the 
one clasping the other's heel. 

It was meant that this land should be a home 
of liberty and justice, for all God's creatures to 
the end of time; that the rights of man should 
stand and grow here as the old forests of 
the wilderness had stood and groAvn, their roots 
striking deep downward, their tojjs branching 
upward to the open, free heaven, their arms 
intertwining, and the streams of a continent 
watering then- lusty life. There was to be one 
land on the face of the earth in which political 
and religious freedom should walk over its length 
and breadth without let or threat; one where 
there should be on the body and on the soul no 



28 THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND 

chain. So our founders builded. So our fathers 
and mothers suffered, and A\TOught, and prayed. 
And the new temple of promise rose fair and 
stately, and its light streamed afar, and many 
feet, weary and wounded, hastened thither to rest 
within this secure asylum. But alas, what shrines 
were built within! Was there one to a pure faith? 
Was there another to equal law? Was there a 
third to maiden Liberty? But what other fourth 
shrine is that, grim and dark, crowding these 
three; what grisly demon sat within, usurping 
place in that fair fellowship? 

Alas, for the new h623e, and the new nation, 
and the new world! Alas, for our bright western 
star, so soon turning wan and dim! 

But God had not joined this compact with evil. 
His hands were not tied, if ours were. He has a 
way of annulling covenants with crime. He found 
the means to shatter our inviolable bond. He 
sent the earthquake of revolution to shake down 
the demon shrined in our sacred temple. It stood 
strong. It had its foundation deep, and had been 
buttressed with massive masonry. It was clamped 
and riveted to the temple walls with many a bolt 
of iron. But the earthquake was stronger yet. 
It shook and heaved and wrenched apart till it 



IN THE FUTURE OP OUR COUNTRY. 29 

seemed as though the temple itself would fall. 
Many said, it will fall. It did, indeed, tremble 
and rock, and its lights were shivered. But it 
stands yet, with tower and dome catching the 
light of earliest and latest day; and the dark 
shrine is overturned. It lies prostrate and in 
ruins. Its horrid deity is fallen — like Philistia's 
Dagon before the ark — maimed and broken, with 
the stump only remaining. Thus is the bond 
parted. Thus the covenant ceases. And we have 
to watch now that no hand rebuilds that demol- 
ished shrine; that no malign craft sets up Damon's 
stump again in om' gr6at temple. Surely, we 
have felt the curse of this corroding bond long 
enough. Shall we ever bow our necks to it again? 
Shall we suffer any man among men, or any fiend 
from below, to press its poisonous links into our 
flesh once more? We have the shattered materials 
of that dark altar to sweep out of the consecrated 
temple, the last vestige of that horrid idolatry to 
banish and bury forever. This work is not yet 
done. It needs finishing. There are those who 
would knit again the ruptured strands of the old, 
rent covenant. Men of ^ew England, legislators 
of Massachusetts, suffer this never to be! Here, 
where the most strenuous voices of the great 



30 THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND 

reformation have been uttered from the beginning, 
let them still sound forth, full and clear. You 
will have to watch against cunning, selfishness, 
and intrigue; against many a nobler sentiment 
of mistaken generosity and magnanimity, and 
lingering reverence for the Constitution as it was 
—and against that foul monster, fouler and more 
misshapen than Satan saw sitting portress at the 
gate of hell — Pakty Spirit. I do not feel safe 
or at peace, while any legal remnant of this 
accursed thing clings to us. See to it, that this 
bondage of the past be utterly and forever doomed. 
Take you care that this incubus of evil never 
more throne itself upon our national life. 

From this last point, we may rise to a higher 
and more general afiirmation. We must see to it, 
that the ivliole course of this government, hoth in 
its constitutional law, and in its 'public admin- 
istration, shall he determined hy strict right and 
divine principle. 

Have we or have we not yet learned the 
lesson, that evil built into the templed life of a 
people is an element of weakness and corruption 
in the structure? It may seem to the builders a 
necessity. The whole work may pause as though 
there could be no further progress without allowing 



IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY. 31 

the wrong a place. Admitting it, the walls may go 
swiftly up, as though vindicating the expediency 
of the measure, by a success fair and grand — 
and not else possible. But God has taught us 
that this demonstration is a delusion and a terrible 
mistake. The columns so reared have to be taken 
down again; that is the divine teaching. It is 
not real progress to build in with evil that the 
work may go swiftly forward. It goes swiftly to 
decay. All that is built upon it is lost labor. It 
cannot stand. While God reigns, nothing propped 
with wrong shall remain firm. That crumbling 
support. will one day fail, and the superincumbent 
pile lean to its fall. JSTothing but truth and right 
will stand. There is not a trumpet tone so loud 
in all history as that Avhich proclaims it now, that 
our national disaster is the fruit of national crime 
— the issue of mingling evil with the foundations 
of the republic. Are we not educated yet into 
the conviction that we must build altogether in 
righteousness, if we build for posterity and the 
golden futm-e? Have we not acquired a con- 
science yet, m the heart of this American people? 
Shall we not Avalk at length by its light, mthout 
swerving? 



32 THE WORK OP NEW ENGLAND 

What is God's idea in a great nation? Merely 
the better carrying on of commerce and the 
elaboration of the art of comfortable living? Is 
it not that it shall stand the noblest representation 
of the principles of His own supreme government; 
nay, the actual vice-regency of his sceptre among 
men; a temple of concrete justice, in which no 
right shall suffer harm, and no wrong find a 
shelter? If in any of its decrees and procedm*es 
it contradict his attributes, malign his character 
and annul his statutes, will he accept it as his 
ideal, and write upon its front "es^o jyerpetuaf^^ 
Will He not write that other sentence in the old 
Hebrew — mene, mene, tekel, iqjliarsinf 

We are rebuilding here; we must take better 
care this time. It should seem enough to say that 
right is right, — but we must add that right is 
safety, right is perpetuity, right is immortality. 
Wrong is death and destruction, wrong is treason 
and disloyalty. We are taking stern measures 
with rebellion now. But every seeming patriot 
who consents to any unrighteousness in the recon- 
structed nation is a more insidious and a more 
deadly traitor to the Union than any man with arms 
in his hands in all the rebel hosts. 



IN THE FUTURE OP OUR COUNTRY. 33 

In this task of rebuilding, only the most resolute 
steadfastness, only the most sleepless vigilance will 
keep evil out. The demand will be incredibly 
urgent. " Yield here ! " " Give way there ! " 
"Consent to this unimportant compromise and 
embarrassment will be obviated, and all will go 
smoothly ! " The pinch will be the sorest when 
rebellion collapses. With the rebels at our feet 
suing for terms, we shall remember that they were 
our brothers. All our generous sensibilities will be 
moved toward them. Our bowels will yearn over 
them. We shall feel that we cannot be hard with 
them. We shall be put upon our magnanunity. 
We shall take them by the hand and lift them 
tenderly up. We shall be inclined to give them 
more than they would have the face to ask. We 
shall desire to show them that the hand that struck 
down their parricidal weapons was never a hand of 
hate, — but of grieved and reluctant justice. That 
will be a perilous hour for the constancy of 
principle. Then, when any voices ask us in the 
name and in the spirit of fraternal conciliation to 
welcome the erring and the conquered back with 
their old properties and relations, includmg some 
remnant of the ancient wrong, or some new 
vicarious wrong, it will be hard to resist. There 

6 



34 THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND 

is, of course, a place and a sphere for compromise. 
We may yield our interest, we may forego 
advantage, we may waive opinion and preference 
for peace and haiTnony; but we have it as the most 
solemn charge of these years of violence and 
blood, to yield nothing of righteousness and justice 
to any demand for any gain so long as the world 
standeth. 

It is a part of our work which ought to have 
distinct and formal mention, to deepen in the hearts 
of tlie people the sentiment of the sacredness of 
government. There has been in the very nature of 
our institutions a chronic and growing strain upon 
this sentiment. Everything in this land tends to 
the elevation of the individual. We teach that 
each man, standing erect in the image of his God, 
is the peer of every other. We pro^dde for the 
largest training of the individual. He is a graduate 
of the schools. He is master of tongue and 
pen. He is a reader of books. He takes at least 
a daily newspaper; perhaps he jjosts himself morn- 
ing and evening upon all the progress of thought 
and the chronicle of events. He has his opinions. 
He embraces, it may be, some system of social and 
political philosophy. More frequently he holds to 
tenets and prejudices, which are his own and 



IN THE FUTURE OP OUR COUNTRY. 35 

unshared. He is the architect of his own fortunes. 
Every track is free to him. He may aspire hope- 
fully in any direction, and cut foi' himself steps to 
any eminence of name, and place, and power. He 
has his own religious training and religious creed, 
with no State establishment to coerce him into 
uniformity. He looks up to "no man. He is 
dependent upon no one. He brooks interference 
from none. 

The nation is bristling all over with these 
individualities, — as isolated and distinct, and as 
sharp as the quills of the "fretful porcupine." 
How can these millions of independent thinkers be 
made to see alike, feel alike, and act alike in the 
matter of the conmaon supremacy of govermnent? 
The more intelligent and self-reliant they become, 
the more complete each separate manhood is, the 
more difficult the problem grows. How can you 
make any two or more of such constituents take 
the same yoke and wear it peacefully together? 
What. but anarchy can come of such diverse and 
resolute elements? 

[N^ow if goverimient were something that existed 
here independently of these self-poised mmds, 
framed for them, laid upon them, with an inherent 
power to be and to constrain subordmation, the 



36 THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND 

conditions of the problem were instantly changed. 
But with all this independence of thought and 
opuiion, each man is himself clothed with pohtical 
power. He is a sovereign. There is none above 
him. He is himself a maker and administrator of 
laws. Of these millions of sovereigns how will you 
make one harmonious, self-consistent, and authori- 
tative sovereignty? 

Government is their creature, not their monarch. 
How will you teach them to revere what then' 
hands have made? They will the govermnent into 
being. If it doesn't please them they can take it 
down and set up another. Is it natural that they 
should fall before it and do it homage? All 
public officials are their servants, whom they have 
invested with liveries, and to whom they pay wages. 
Is it to be expected that they should kiss the feet 
of their servants? They feel that it is their right 
and their duty to watch, to criticize and to rebuke 
these public servants ; and in this duty they cheer- 
fully abomid. Is this the way to cultivate reverence 
and submission? 

How obvious is it that the maintenance of 
government, and especially the hallowing of its 
authority over such a constituency of free, intelli- 
gent, independent, and sovereign minds, is one of 



IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY. 37" 

those problems concerning which there is always 
the hazard of an ill-omened issue. Disloyalty and 
treason, and sympathy with both are the logical 
inference of this inflated sense of the popular 
relation to the government of the land. 

We need to insist upon the divinenesa of human 
government. Our children must be taught it from 
the cradle, that however constituted, "the powers 
that be are ordained of God." If men elect, God 
crowns. If we lead our rulers to the chair of state, 
God puts the sceptre into their hands. They 
become then, not our officials, but His. They are 
the servants, not of popular caprice, nor the will of 
majorities, they are the servants of the Throned 
Justice, the supreme Right. 

The natural philosophy of government ought 
to have clearer, more impressive, and more constant 
explication in all the literature that trains the 
American mind. Our school books, the jDress, the 
rostrum, the pulpit, should discuss with more 
earnestness and more simplicity, the fundamental 
principles of that philosophy. 

If men are to dwell together in communities, 
there must, of course, be social order. The opposite 
of this is anarchy, chaos. For order there must 
be law, — equal, impartial, universal law. 



38 THE WORK OP NEW ENGLAND 

For the supremacy of law there must be adminis- 
trative authority, — the right and the power to 
institute and enforce law. 

For the ground of this right, the charter of this 
authority, we come back again to the will of God, 
who accepts earthly magistracies as his vicege- 
rents, and clothes them mth his own delegated 
sanctity. 

There is no land under heaven that so needs the 
.popular demonstration and the constant iteration 
of these truths as ours. And it is but the nearest 
inference to add, that there is none where the 
righteousness of the statute and the purity of the 
magistrate are more closely connected with the 
sacredness of the govermnent in the popular heart. 
Civil enactments, whose ins23u-ation is partisan 
intrigue, or mercenary favoritism — an unjust ruler, 
setting up the d}iiasty of his own passions, preju- 
dices and partialities — a corrupt legislator, writing 
in the statute book with unclean hands — a magis- 
trate swayed by self-interest, and purchasable with 
gold, — these give public contradiction to their 
divine paternity, and make contemj^t of govern- 
ment and revolt against law the instinct of all 
noble natures. So far as the pojiular faith goes, 
the legitimacy of civil government, as an ordinance 



IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY. 39 

of Heaven, runs in the channel of purity and 
equity. For public impression, the proof of divine 
authorship halts when the divine likeness fails. If 
we would keep men's hearts among us loyal to 
civil authority, and help to make the Supremacy of 
Law inviolable through the land, we have it in 
solemn charge to guard the avenues to power from 
all profane approach, and to exercise the functions 
of office, legislative and executive, in all honesty 
and good conscience. 

I think it is worthy, also, of a moment's separate 
plea, that we utter the sentiments and heliefs of 
New England in full, clear, unequivocal speech. 
We must hold fast here to our birthright of free 
thought and free speech. There is notliiug that 
concerns the honor and progress of the nation, or 
the rights of humanity, m reference to which it is 
not our priAdlege to inquire, to form our conclusions, 
and to declare them in the hearmg of om* fellow- 
men. Every principle, every measure that seeks 
ascendancy in this land, — every ancient, every fresh 
founded mstitution, we have a right to discuss. 
Whatever subtle leaven woidd insinuate itself into 
the life of the nation — whatever comes to us with 
the imposing front of precedent and authority, and 
assumes the prerogative to control our history, we 



40 THE WORK OF NEW ENGLAND 

may u§e our sharpest faculties to search out, and 
to shoAV forth their nature and their claim. The 
honest thoughts — the deep convictions — the intense 
sympathies of our New England hearts, frankly 
and holdly uttered, have been no mean power in the 
nation in rectifying public sentiment, undermining 
the security of wrong, and preparing the national 
mind for generous and radical progress. There 
have been those who would have laid a finger of 
iron on IsTew England's lips, and silenced her faith- 
ful witness. But she keeps her birthright yet. 
Let her guard it well for the future. Let her 
maintain her right to question, to investigate, to 
fomi her opinion upon the wisdom and the morality 
of all that courts the popular suffrage, not as one 
ambitious to hold a barren sceptre, but earnest to 
pour her own copious life into the public veins for 
the health and vigor of the nation's being. This 
is one imperial jDrerogiative of 'New England, one 
most sacred obligation, to overstep her own bounda- 
ries with the forceful moral influence of her public 
testimony against all civil and social wrong; her 
strong protective plea for every imiDcrilled right. 
Our numbers are few and our territory small ; we 
have no Valley Stream flowing from our hills 
through the length of the northern continent. But 



IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY. 41 

from the pure cool fountains of these moral and 
mtellectual heights we may send forth a ceaseless 
utterance for truth, right, and liberty, — a deep, 
broad river, watering all the land. 

There will come upon us soon a call to help 
repeople and resettle a desolate South. There is 
one symbol of prophecy upon the brow of which we 
might write as its most fitting interpretation this 
word — Wae. It is that "fourth beast," that 
Daniel saw in his night vision, rising out of the. 
" great sea," — " dreadful, and terrible, and strong, 
exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth; it 
devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the 
residue, with the feet of it." Under these horrid 
hoofs, many parts of the South have become a 
waste more dreary than any untamed wilderness. 
In the wilderness of savage nature there is nothing 
suggestive of violence and destruction. But in 
following the track of an invading army, we walk 
amid the wreck of what was once fan' and 
blooming order. 

The fences are gone from the fields once 
bearing up thrifty tillage and rich haiTests. 
Granaries and barns have sunk into Wack heaps 
of coal and cinder. The lone chimney tells where 
the peaceful cottage rose. A ranker growth of 



42 THE WORK OP NEW ENGLAND 

tangled weeds betrays the site of the garden. 
Koiws of stumps recall the once fruitful orchard. 
The level fields of the farm have been ridged up 
with earth- works, and ditched with rifle-pits. In 
.the once, companionable hamlet not a dweller 
remains. A house or two may yet be standing 
above the blackened ruins of its fellows, but without 
doors or window lights, and with wind and stonn 
sweeping through its dismal chambers. Fragments 
of household furniture lie scattered around, half 
embedded in the earth. A school-house or a 
church at the fork of confluent roads, show in their 
pierced and shattered walls, how the meeting tides 
of battle surged around that salient angle. Within, 
the floor has been rudely cleared, for what purpose 
many a dull stain on the boards gives testimony. 
The public roads lead you to the bank of bridgeless 
rivers. There are no vehicles of travel remaining, 
no . implements of husbandry, no tools of art. 'No 
flocks nor herds wander in the pastures, no beasts 
of draft or burden wait for the harness. The 
narrow, curving level keeps the memorial of the 
railway; but the sleej^ers are burned, and the iron 
twisted int^ rusty contortions. Civilization must 
begin again with all her tasks repeated, and these 
melancholy ghosts haunting the scenes of her old 



IN THE FUTURE OF OUR COUNTRY. 43 

triumphs. Immense regions at the South, are thus 
bhghted. The obduracy of rebelHon, and rebelhon 
is still obdurate, has brought upon itself this 
unsparing scourge. 

It seems to me that this tenacity of purpose witk 
the southern leaders and ruling classes, is of God. 
It wears the aspect of a judicial decree. It is like 
the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, that the whole 
southern system of life, labor and society may be 
drowned together in this red sea — and not a 
vestige of the old malign civilization of that 
portion of our country, survive these bloody years. 

Upon such a radical devastation there will come 
in our new duties, to explore these wastes — to map 
out the vast territories over which the ploughshare 
of extermination has been driven — to open up the 
promise of these fertile and masterless estates to 
the keen eyes of northern thrift and the hurrying 
tread of emigrant feet — to Americanize the new 
busy marches that will soon press, with mightier 
armies, and with more peaceful weapons those 
silent fields — and to send thither the seeds of 
ISTew England life and institutions, to be scattered 
broadcast and first of all to occupy the ground. 

There will be also a work, worthy our best 
endeavors, to hring up, ennoble and save a degraded 



44 THE WORK OP NEW ENGLAND 

remnant of southern population. Here all that is 
generous and charitable, all that is magnanimous 
and forgiving in the heart of !N^ew England, ^vill 
have free scope. We shall have to show our former 
•nemies how sincerely and truly we can be, and are 
their friends. We shall have to bless them in 
spite of their prejudices and all the depressing 
weight of their old habits. We shall have to show 
them how much better we can do for them than 
they have ever done for themselves. We shall need 
to parcel out for them new estates — to organize for 
them home industries — to put into their hands the 
implements of various work — to help them lift a 
roof-tree over their heads — to inspire them with 
hope, diligence, economy, and the ambition for self- 
improvement — to set before them on their own soil, 
the models of our own sweet and comfortable 
domestic life — to build school-houses and churches 
and send them teachers and preachers, and sift into 
all their brightning consciousness the light of 
letters, the issues of the daily press, and a fresh, 
healthful, evangelical literature. This grand charity 
will tax our faith and our self-denial to the utmost 
for years to come. How many voices will call 
mournfully to us throughout this bereaved and 
and desolate South! What fragments of broken 



IN THE FUTURE OP OUR COUNTRY. 45 

homes will appeal to us! How many wandering 
fugitives, not knowing on which side the grave 
their Mndi-ed are; houseless, friendless, penniless, 
with tragic memories behind them and no light of 
hope before, will wait our coming to bless them, 
with a shelter and renew for them some faint 
interest in life. 

Of course tJie future of the African Race in this 
land, is a problem that will press us as it will press 
the whole country with its urgent and difficult 
conditions. This land that has held them in 
bondage, will have to give them a home. This 
nation that has been to them a taskmaster, will have 
to be a foster-parent and a protector. With their 
restored manliood, they must have such a start in 
respect to then* material interest, and then* social 
prospects, as well as in all that relates to their 
intellectual, moral, and religious nurture, that the 
futm'e shall, if possible, if they enter its open door, 
grandly overpay their sorrowful past. For this full 
redemption of the emancipated slave, ]Krew England 
must by wise and unstinted charities, by generous 
legislation and by all social magnanunities, do her 
royal share. 

This is a* glance only at the tasks crowding in 
upon us in the days that now are and the days that 



46 THE WORK OP NEW ENGLAND 

are to come. It covers but a small part of the 
whole field of our duty to our age and our race. 
But there is enough in these few specifications to 
invoke our most strenuous diligence, our loftiest 
consecration. It rests with us, and those who shall 
succeed us, to make this !N^ew England of ours, — 
by her pure life and steadfast prmciple, her just 
laws, beneficent institutions and stainless morals, 
her clear and commanding utterance for immortal 
right, her public and private charities, her sense of 
the grandeiu' of the ordeal through which this 
nation and all it involves of hope and promise for 
man is passing now, and above all her faithful 
adherence to the original ideal of a Puritan Com- 
monwealth, walking and talkuig with God, and 
holding His will everywhere supreme, — an angel of 
mercy and guidance to our whole land, for this 
and for all after times. 

We congratulate the State rather than his Excel- 
lency that this occasion signals no retirement from 
the chair of her chief magistracy. It was not 
needed for him, for any completeness of personal 
or official honor, for the very smnmit of a just and 
wide fame that the peoj^le of Massachusetts should 
once more with such large consent put the rems 
of her public affairs into those tried and skilfid 



IN THE FUTUEE OF OUR COUNTRY. 47 

hands. She honors herself most by so placing 
this high trust. She loiows, and beyond her 
borders the central govenment and the nation know, 
with what prescient forecast, what timely provi- 
dence, what hopefid courage, what unquenchable 
loyalty, what indefatigable diligence, and what 
thoughtful tenderness her administration at home 
and abroad has been conducted through these dark 
days of revolution and conflict. Her internal order 
and prosperity, her renown m the high places of 
the field, both the spirit and the comfort of her 
sons d-oing brave battle for the sacred flag, her 
weight in the scale of right on the grave questions 
of the hour, are the bright record which justifies 
the inference that she is governed well. 

If we could spare you, sir, we would give you 
release from these solemn cares, and follow you 
with our commemorative gratitude into the peaceful 
retirement of private life. But in these stern days 
of work, when our whole l^ew England has so 
much to do to inaugurate the elect and waiting 
future, we pile our public burdens upon you once 
more, and beseech the God of our fathers to 
give you strength to bear them as worthily in 
the year to come as in these historic years that 
have gone. 



48 THE WORK OP NEW ENGLAND. 

And may the gentlemen of the Senate, the 
Council, and the House of Representatives, — called 
of their fellow citizens to the discharge of duties 
which would at any time have invoked their best 
wisdom and highest fidelity, be quickened to discern 
at what a point they stand in the history and 
fortunes of the republic, and the lengthening scroll 
of human progress; and forgetting their own ease 
and emolument, and rising above every personal 
and private interest, give to the care of the State, 
and the honor and safety of the nation in these 
troubled times, all their heart, and all their soul, 
and all their mind, and all their strength ! 

And before the term of ofiicial duty which opens 
for you to-day shall have run out, may we be called 
to join, with all the people of the land, in keeping 
such a day of public thanksgiving to Almighty 
God as has never gathered our joy and praise in 
the past, — over a nation saved, united, free, at 
peace with itself, with all the world and with the 
Throne of Infinite Justice and Goodness ! 



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